Eppingen, Germany – Bitche, France

The drive to France was easy enough, but getting to Bitche was a tad difficult due to a diversion which was signed in rather an ad hoc manner. If that wasn’t bad enough, when we eventually found our way onto Route de Bitche, we got behind a doddery old campervanner, with no chance of getting past for the last 9 miles of our journey. If that wasn’t bad enough, we followed him to the aire, where he took the last place!  We parked up on the rough ground next to it and had lunch, whilst at the same time trying not to look like a couple of vultures waiting for their prey to die, or in this particular instance, waiting for one of the other 4 ‘vanners to leave. Just as we poured our after lunch coffee, Rachel shouts “One’s going”! A quick swivel round in the driver’s seat, and with some rather rapid, yet impressively smooth driving, we managed to bag our much treasured prime overnight location without spilling so much as a microlitre of coffee.

We are parked in the shadow of The Citadel, as far as citadels go this is big, it was 1 mile to walk around it, and if that isn’t impressive enough then you will recall that during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 (9 months and 3 weeks, call that a war? It’s a skirmish, which the Germans won again on penalties) Louis-Casimir Teyssier, its commander and chief, held the place for 8 months with 3,000 men against 20,000 Prussian and Bavarian soldiers. We’re not surprised, the place looks impregnable. 

Eppingen

Bitche

Harry in prime spot with 2 happy campers

Pre afternoon thunderstorm

Obviously not!

A roundabout with a difference!

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Church bells, Dogs and Rain: The search for that elusive of all things, a peaceful night’s sleep.

Sleeping in a campervan, one is a little more ‘in touch’ with your surroundings than staying in a hotel, granted, you aren’t quite as exposed as you would be if camping, but it’s not far off.

Having slept, or tried to sleep, in most of western and central Europe over the last 6 months, here is our campervanners guide for a quiet night.

Don’ts

Don’t park on a flight path (as we did in Budapest)

Don’t park by a railway line (as we did in Budapest)

Don’t park by a police, fire or ambulance station (as we did in Budapest)

You guessed it, Budapest was noisy!

Under NO circumstances park amongst automatic grass sprinklers which come out to play at 1am!

Try to avoid staying near a busy main road (as we did in Karlovy Vary)

Church Bells

We feel we are now the authority on the subject of church bells, having experienced the 10pm and 11pm watershed, the 6am, 7am and 8am restart, the variety of 24 hour chiming every 15 minutes with an extra flourish on the hour, or even half hour. There is obviously an international rule that states: When one or more churches should be in ‘striking’ distance of each other, never shall they be synchronised. If you are particularly unlucky, you can get a hat-trick of churches striking randomly enough to ensure that the only chance you are going to experience a silent night is to come at Christmas time.

Dogs

We love dogs, but not from 10pm until dawn when they take turns at out barking each other from various points around the village or town. Spain and Portugal are the biggest offenders, where dogs are free to roam either singularly, or in packs, and leave their plain brown packets wherever they choose.

Rain

A difficult one this, heavy rain and thunderstorms are always a sure fire way to take your mind off counting sheep. You could reduce the chance of this by steering clear of anywhere where it’s warm during June, particularly mountainous areas, and non mountainous areas.

Summary

Keep well away from airports, cities and main roads.

Don’t park within 2 miles of any church.

Avoid villages, particularly in Spain and Portugal as they will probably have a dog problem, you may even get it in Italy, France, Slovenia, Croatia, Slovakia, Bosnia, Serbia, Hungary, Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic, but not Germany, you can’t hear them for the church bells!

Don’t go out in the rain.

Avoid Europe in June.

Give grass sprinklers a miss.

That should just about cover it, goodnight.

P.S. Please don't contact us to buy Harry, we may need him to come to Europe again........in June

Willkommen to Wohnmobilstellplatz

The most amazing thing about Germany is that Harry has shown a complete new lease of life since returning to his homeland. It was understandable that as we crossed the border from the Czech Republic that the standard of the main road continued to be billiard table smooth, but turning onto the minor roads was the difference between Germany and…………well, frankly every country we’ve passed through since leaving France in April, and that’s eleven! Driving along these country roads is as if they had just newly surfaced them especially to welcome Harry. We thought we were going deaf, as there wasn’t the slightest creak, rattle of tea cups or chinking of loose wine bottles to be heard anywhere, oh the joy of it compared to somewhere like Hungary, where we were starting to think we’d be bringing Harry back in a couple of sacks.

We were greeted on our arrival at our first wohnmobilstellplatz, or stellplatz for short, by Robert. This is a free (for convenience I will use my preferred French term) ‘aire’, in the small village of Marktleuthen about 15 miles over the border. Robert gave us a welcome pack which included all the usual tourist leaflets, plus bread ordering note-let, poo bag (should we have a dog), disposable glove (for emptying your toilet cassette or whatever other means you could find for it) all contained in a ‘to be kept’ shopping bag. A quick tour of all the facilities, free electric included of course, but it is 50c for the showers and €1.50 for wifi. When do we expect the UK to catch up with this kind of service for campervanners?

It is just a one night stand for us, but checking the weather forecast has not helped guide us in any specific direction other than a general westerly one, as all of mainland Europe seems to be fighting off thunderstorms until the weekend.

Our free, let's call it 'aire', complete with the standard beer bellied German.

Charles IV: Charles Bridge, Prague - Karlovy Vary

Charles IV was a big hitter in these parts during the 14th century, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, not only did he sort the bridge out at Prague, but he also founded Karlovy Vary, which is named after him. He did a decent job with both, but enough of the 14th century, let's get back to the 21st.

Our two night camper stop in Prague was in somebody's back garden, the surprising thing was that most of the houses down this 'well to do' street, seemed to have had their large back gardens converted to accommodate campervans, and an impressive job have been made of them too. They are like mini Caravan Club sites with all having the amenities one would expect.

What we didn't expect when we departed on Sunday morning, was the drive across the city at a constant 43mph without the need to break stride for traffic lights, roundabouts, pedestrian crossings or other traffic. Prague has a roadway tunnel, which we joined as we went under the Vltava and continued through uninterrupted for 4 miles until we emerged in the western suburbs, excellent!

The dog on the trike was the highlight of our drive to Karlovy Vary, although we have no complaints with the Czech roads, or the beautiful rolling countryside that we swept through.

Whenever we look back over this trip this is one town that we certainly won't forget!

The town is presently preparing for the annual International Film Festival, something to do with the Crystal Globe Awards, so we had to be selective with our filming to avoid getting stage sets and advertising hoardings in shot. This didn't detract from the place though as almost every building in the town was a work of art.

Other than the warm water spouting out naturally from the 300 thermal springs, the most impressive sight is the Russian Orthodox Church. The cathedral of St Peter & St Paul is apparently the country's largest and most important of its kind. It was built in the style of the Byzantine-old Russian church in Ostankino near Moscow. We've never been in a church like this before, but the inside is in complete contrast to the outside, it was so dark and drab and not at all as we expected.

So Vary (as it's known locally) gets the massive thumbs up from us, and we would like to thank the Czech friend we met back in Italy, for the tip off. It should be on everyone's list if travelling through the country. His other recommendation was Cesky Krumlov, but as it's 150 miles southeast and we're westbound it will need to wait for our return.

Karlovy Vary

Eighty miles west of Prague is the small spa town of Karlovy Vary, we were tipped off about this place by a fellow Czech camper we met in Italy. The town is the most colourful place we have ever visited, the photos will give you some idea.

https://www.karlovyvary.cz/en

En route we saw one cool dog!

Prague

I’m glad we set off early on the tram for our city tour, we arrived by Prague’s No.1 attraction, Charles Bridge early enough to get across before hoards of those pesky tourists brought the place to a near standstill.

Interesting fact: The numerical palindrome 135797531 carved onto the Old Town Bridge Tower at the east end of the bridge is far from random. This sequence, refers to the exact time and date of the placement of the bridge’s foundation stone, determined by royal astrologers as an auspicious time. Work began on the 9th of July 1357 at 5.31 AM. Medieval beliefs attributed a magical power to odd numbers and arranged them in a particular way to create a pyramidal pattern symbolic of power.

Apologies for the rather uninspiring photographs, it really is much better than these make out!

Another advantage of seeing the city during the morning, is that it is now regarded as one of Europe’s leading destinations for stag and hen weekends. What this means is that by lunchtime this species has recovered enough (in most cases) from the previous night’s excesses, to venture out during daylight hours. By mid afternoon the more discerning tourist is joined by bleary eyed, bottle carrying groups of all nationalities, wearing their respective ‘uniforms’, of matching t shirts advertising why they had travelled a 1,000 miles to get hammered. As the afternoon wears on, the city becomes more theirs as they hone in on their favourite bar and get into good voice, that can be heard several streets away. This is like a light to a moth as the Germans, Dutch and any other nationality cannot resist the attraction of 20 Geordies singing footy songs at the top of their voices.

That became the signal for us to ‘tram it’ back to our campsite, but not before we had managed to walk 11 miles, just like the other amazing cities we’ve seen on this trip Prague gave us the buzz we like, yet another highlight of this tour.

Oh, and one last thing, during the late morning we wandered through one of the many parks and saw some guys erecting a sign proudly advertising ‘The 2017 Prague Naked Cycle Ride’, we didn’t think it was worth hanging out for.

This place made the penny drop for us about a building back in Hungary.
Notice how the sun shines through the plinths sticking out of the wall, thereby spelling a name.

When we were in Budapest it was cloudy so this is how the building looked. Having seen the place in Prague today we Googled a photo of The House of Terror and when it's sunny....

Svitavy to Prague

The free aire at Svitavy was tops, everything a seasoned campervanner could possibly want, but as the early evening approached, our smugness at choosing such a cracking aire was thrown into doubt. You may not remember, but our campervan buddies Neil and Kath certainly do, the trumpeter of Cadiz! It seemed like the whole band had come over from Spain, as there was definitely a Spanish slant to the music, and it was of a similar quality! Thankfully they packed up well before we’d finished our last bottle of wine! So, a lovely peaceful night’s sleep was on the cards then, well it would have been had the thunderstorm not lasted for 4 hours! We have never experienced anything quite like it, but in the morning everything seemed to be still in the right place, even though there was a general washed out look to the place.

We tipped over the 8,000 miles en route to Prague and spent the afternoon recovering from last night and preparing for our city tour tomorrow. As we drew the route of this trip on the map, the memories of the places we had visited came ‘flooding’ back. Just over 2 weeks to go now, but still plenty of new places to see even if there are no more new countries on this trip.

The 8,000 mile scenic route from Carlisle to Prague

Krakow and Czech Republic

We spent most of Tuesday wandering around Krakow at a more leisurely pace and it is definitely in the top ten cities we have visited in the van, possibly top 5. Not only does it have a clean and beautiful historic centre but it is so cheap! Not just the beer, but a full English breakfast, 2 coffees and a Fanta for £7, or 2 ice creams for £1.

Wednesday morning we headed for the Czech Republic and deliberately overshot the Auschwitz exit, we had discussed going there, but decided against it for emotional reasons.

It is good to be here, the last on the list of our ‘countries we have never visited before’. The second leg of this trip has only been a whistle-stop tour, but we are still enjoying sampling these ‘new’ countries.

Last piece of our 'New World' jigsaw

One of the most trying tasks on this trip is keeping the van cool when we’re parked up, so it comes as a relief that not only are we in the beautiful grounds of Bouzov Castle, but our spot well shaded from the heat of the sun.